Dark Cravings (3 page)

I stepped in front of Micah. “Stay back.”

In one of those lightning-quick moves, he grabbed my arm and
yanked me roughly behind him. “And miss the fight? I don’t think so. This one’s
mine.”

Before I could open my mouth to argue, a need more fierce
then I could have ever imagined slammed into me. My head was thick, heavy, and
all I could think of was Micah’s hard cock pounding into me, making me scream.

“Fuck,” Micah hissed.

He turned to me. The look in his eyes was carnal and hungry.
The expression on his face was feral and terrifying. My insides clenched and
the rush of moisture between my thighs made the need unbearable. Micah’s gaze
enveloped my breasts and the hard, tight peaks of my nipples. I saw the strain
in every muscle that tensed and released in the hollows below his cheekbones,
but he eventually met my eyes. We both swallowed.

I need you
, his eyes said.

I’m yours
, mine responded.

“Succubus.” Our breathy words echoed simultaneously.

As if we’d conjured it, the demon emerged from the mist,
looking ethereal and more delicate than any sex-sucking bitch from hell had a
right to be. I wanted to look away and I couldn’t. I stepped closer.

The succubus moved effortlessly through the thick haze.
Roiling behind her with each step, long black hair floated above the mist. The
strands moved in an unnatural tandem with the flaps of her shimmering robe.
Through her pale, translucent skin I could still see the outline of the angelic
statue in the distance like a double exposure.

She looked at me. No, not at me—through me. She stared into
the darkest parts of me with eyes that were rich, swirling rings of color. The
outer rim was royal blue, the middle a shimmering green and where a black pupil
should have been there was a spiraling gold center. The curve of her mouth
turned up and the look on her face promised nothing but pure, undiluted sin.

My fingers loosened around the knife I hadn’t remembered
pulling out. The weapon thudded, along with Micah’s gun, to the ground.
Invisible fingers moved along my jaw, tickled down my shoulder and pulled at my
hand. The warm sensation beckoned me closer to the danger ahead. I forced my
eyes away from the still-smiling demon to glance at Micah.

Unable to move, I watched him go to her, his trembling
fingers outstretched and reaching. Each step he took was jerky and uneven. I
got the distinct impression half of him was fighting to move in the opposite
direction. His eyes, his beautiful eyes, were now glazed over with a filmy gray
shimmer.

We were so screwed.

“Yes, hunter,” the demon purred. “Come to me. The darkness,
the untapped power inside you tastes delicious.”

Shit. Shit. Shit.
Micah was firmly in the demon’s
grip. I had to do something. Anything. I’d never phazed on purpose before and I
wasn’t entirely sure how. Julian had conveniently forgotten to leave me with a
vampiric manual. With the last ounce of willpower I could muster, I focused all
of my strength on Micah, on feeling the heat of his chest at my back and his
breath against my neck. If he went to the succubus, he wasn’t coming back. Not
alive, at least. I concentrated on his scent, the leather and the spice. I
thought of the soap, the three-inch scar on his chest I’d given him during an
overly eager sparring match last month. I thought of him.

Time shifted in a woozy blur of colors. In the next instant,
Micah was behind me. He took a half step and collided into my back.

Beads of sweat broke out over every inch of my body. Micah
slid his hands under my knee-length coat. Drawing his fingers along my thighs,
my hips, he brought me closer. He used one hand to cut across my stomach,
hugging me. Slowly, he drew the other up between my aching breasts and I moaned.
Micah’s caress didn’t stop until his fingers clamped over my right shoulder and
his forearm banded over my sternum. He clung to me, pulled me harder against
him. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move.

The shaking began as a gentle quiver I thought was coming
from the earth. It wasn’t an earthquake—Micah’s muscles were seizing. One after
another, violent shudders racked his body.

Micah’s breath trailed a line of fire along my neck. He
pressed his mouth tight against my ear and gasped with what I assumed was his
last coherent thought, “We’re fucked.”

The beauty in front of us let out a charming chorus of
laughter that reminded me of porcelain bells tinkling in a cave. The sound
echoed. The glamour all demons possessed flickered with the sound of her mirth.
For a moment she faded between a mask of translucence and black decay. Demons might
dress up pretty for us mortals, but underneath…well, the sight was gruesome.
Micah pressed his body against mine, as if he could walk through me in order to
get to her, and we stumbled.

“Oh my.” The succubus clapped with glee. “Aren’t you two a
pair? The brave little vampire protecting her mate from the big, bad demon.”

I wasn’t going to bother correcting her. One, I wasn’t truly
a vampire, and two, Micah was not my mate.

“Move any closer and I’ll cut your head off,” I hissed, or
tried to at least. My words came out as a husky whimper. The combination was
strange.

Movement disturbed the mist around the succubus and sent
currents of fog through the air. Inch by inch, she unfolded a pair of
shimmering wings that spanned three feet in each direction. Colors that didn’t
exist in our dimension shifted on the delicate feathers of those gossamer
wings. She flapped them, causing a cyclone of mist, wind and energy to fan the night.

Her head moved to one side, then the other. The look told me
she was the wolf and I was the injured fawn. I was pinned, both by Micah’s
unbreakable grasp and her piercing gaze. I had a sick feeling I wasn’t going to
like what she said next.

“Is it possible?” she whispered. Something I couldn’t read
flashed in those tricolored eyes and it scared the shit out of me. The succubus
went still, thoughtful. “I believed it to be a lie, but no. The Vampire Queen
and yes…the Demon Son. Destruction and mayhem!” She clapped with an unholy
glee.

For the first time since I’d been changed, I didn’t feel my
sire’s constant presence in my head. No, there was something much worse there
now. Desperate, I reached out for the tie I shared with Julian. He would save
me. He had to. In my panic, I was clumsy. Hand over imaginary hand, I yanked on
the bond between us, but I was too inexperienced and it was too slippery for me
to grab hold. I was falling into darkness. The sea of black was icy, such a
contrast to the heat engulfing me.

The succubus chanted, her ancient words gaining strength
with every syllable. My insides shifted, my skin burning. I looked down to see
the arm Micah held across my chest glowing with bright, streaking lines.
Serpentine was the only way I could describe how they moved under his skin. As
I watched, the sapphire lines moved from him to me.

I screamed. I struggled. Nothing I did helped block the
horrific sensation of things slithering under my skin. Gritting my teeth, I
concentrated on the vampire who had taken my innocence, my love, my life and
destroyed them all.
Julian, I need you. I need you. I need you. Help me.
The walls around my mind, around my bond with my sire, crumbled. I got a vision
of Julian on his knees, a black cloak fanned around him to create an inky
circle. The ground beneath him was cold, so very cold and hard. I couldn’t just
see it, I felt it as if I were there. Pain. So much agony. Julian’s head was
thrown back, his eyes glowing with blue electric flames so bright I couldn’t
make out the features of his aristocratic face. The unnatural light illuminated
dusty stone walls. There were others around him, seven cloaked in black flowing
robes that made them little more than shadows. I knew without having to be told
that this was the queen’s inner circle.

“
Min älskling
,” Julian warned. “You should not be
here.”

His voice was not the tinny echo I’d grown accustomed to in
the last seven years. The tone was different. Richer. It was how I remembered
it when he panted against my neck while he fucked me. Jesus, was I inside his
head? I didn’t have time to think about what I was doing.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

I pushed harder, reaching for him as if I could pull him
inside me. He broke. Power poured into me, too much and too quick. I was
drowning in it. I struggled for breath, struggled to orient myself. The
snake-like lines moving inside my body coiled, struck. All the energy inside
exploded.

Fiery dust motes rained down upon Micah and me. Someone
screamed. Maybe it was me, maybe it was Micah. Hell, maybe it was Julian. The
sound rang out. Above the noise I heard the succubus.

She chanted. “Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, let the
lust of your anger and your passions release you. Release you!”

The dark shadow inside me unraveled from my soul like twine
being unbraided. The crouching silhouette rushed to the surface and the last
thing I remembered was the sharp pleasure of Micah’s body against mine before
the world fell away and everything went black.

I didn’t drown in the panic immediately. There was a
blissful moment, the one you have when you wake from a deep, dreamless sleep. I
relaxed into that sea of nothingness and let myself drift. There was no pain,
only numbness and solitude.

Solitude.

That wasn’t quite right. I knew without knowing why, or how,
that I wasn’t alone.

The first icy tides of fear lapped at my feet, splashed
slowly up my body. A heartbeat too distant to be mine thrummed like an army battalion
on the march. The sound pulsed louder, stronger, closer, with each passing
second.

I woke, eyes snapping open to a void of darkness. The
thud-thud of my heart quickened, became erratic. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t
breathe. The fear, heavy as water, filled my lungs until I was choking on it.
One gulping pant at a time, I struggled to force air inside.

As I shifted, the movement pushed me into a landscape of
springs and lumps. I was on an unfamiliar bed. I blinked up at a ceiling,
struggling to bring the pebbled surface into focus. There was no stucco in my
bedroom. The ache mounting inside wasn’t gentle. The pain didn’t ebb as my
vision cleared. The sensation was a throbbing, bubbling stream of molten lava.
The quicker my pulse sped, the faster my blood boiled.

Was I hurt? Was I waking from a nightmare? The last time I
woke confused and gasping like this, Julian had given me a few pints of his
blood and I’d been turned. That time, though, I had woken to silk sheets and an
orgy-sized bed soft enough to cradle every contour of the body. For a moment I
retreated into the memory of Julian pushing the sweat-matted hair off my
forehead. He’d cooed his foreign words along the shell of my ear and eased me
against him. I remembered the hard press of his body, the utter stillness of
his chest when he guided my mouth to his throat and urged me to bite.

I jerked away from the memory and into a pink nightmare.

Through a gap in the stiff, mauve curtains that adorned the
room’s only two windows, light reflected off the drapes and gave everything a
nauseating rosy tint. The shiny veneered table under the window held a generic
gold lamp with a misshapen maroon shade that cast awful colored light and
vomited it against the once-white walls. The only thing not pink was a two-foot
by two-foot chunk of yellow-tinged wallpaper curling away from where the
ceiling met the wall. Where in the hell was I?

Every breath I struggled to take was laden with a powerful
odor. Under the smoldering scent of smoke, mold and sweat was the richness of
sex. The unmistakable musk filled each shallow gasp. Despite the pain affecting
every inch of my body, I shot upright. Scratchy, pink cotton sheets slid over
my bare breasts to pool around my hips. Why was I naked? The simplest answer
was usually the correct one. I fought logic.

“No. No. No,” I gasped.

Confusion pounded my head into the first starbursts of a
migraine. I refused to think about the intimate places that burned. I refused
to identify why my skin was sticky and tight with dried fluids. It was mostly
blood. And sweat.

If I dwelled on it I’d cry. Instead I tried to think about
how I’d gotten here. Where was here? A mammoth chunk of my memory was missing.
I had to think. I had to calm down. I’d start at the beginning. Where had I
been? What was the last conscious thought I’d had before the darkness swallowed
me? Where had the darkness spit me out?

Shimmering wings brushed through my subconscious. Something
slithered under my skin.

The graveyard. Micah. The succubus. Chanting.

Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood…The Vampire Queen
and the Demon Son…

Oh, the demon bitch was going to die.

Someone beside me groaned. Reluctantly, I looked to the
source of that sound. I didn’t want to see who was beside me. All of this had
to be some cruel joke, it had to be.

The sight of familiar broad shoulders sucked away any air I’d
managed to capture. Micah lay on his side, bare feet hanging off the end of the
bed. The other half of the sheet I was clutching against myself was intimately
intertwined with his body. His naked body. He hugged the sheet closer, cradled
it in his arms like his beloved shotgun.

I stared at the exposed curve of his muscular thigh, his
hip. I stopped at the crimson tattoo branding his flesh. When the hell had he
gotten a tattoo? The design etched into his skin was intricate, almost tribal.
Thick lines crossed over his hip and curled down his abdomen to disappear under
the sheet like a lover’s caressing hand. The sight was the sexiest thing I’d
ever seen. Lust whipped through me and stole all rational thought. With a slow
and consuming gaze, I traced my way up the length of his lean body. Despite his
demon hunting, bar brawling and active lifestyle, he wasn’t bulky. He was
slender and tightly defined. The combination was delicious.

In the dimness of the room his muscles looked different,
more seductive. I shook my head and tried to focus. As the sun emerged outside,
the rosy glow inside the room intensified. The light caught Micah’s skin and
made it glisten. Was he covered in blood or was it the damned pink tint? I
sniffed. Recoiled. He was covered in blood. My blood? His blood?

My fingers trembled against the fangs pressed into my lower
lip. This time my nausea had nothing to do with pink.

Micah rolled onto his back and let out a sharp, pained sound
for his efforts. The sheet covering him slipped away one inch at a time to
expose the rest of his tattoo and his hardening penis. Oh. My. God. His
breathing shifted and his heartbeat responded as mine had. He was awake,
confused and knew he wasn’t alone. Without opening an eye, his hand patted
across the slender gap of bloodstained sheets between us.

I wanted nothing more than to disappear. I couldn’t move,
not even when the heat of his hand found my calf. I tensed, stopped breathing,
but didn’t move away. His hand was rough, the pads just a little bit scratchy
from calluses. I got flashes of repressed sensation. Arousal tightened my body
and clenched things low in my stomach. Slowly, Micah slid his caress over my
knee, tickled it up the inside of my thigh like a familiar lover. Fire chased
his touch and I was too stunned to do anything but sit there and stare at his
closed eyelids.

It wasn’t until he squeezed my thigh, possessive and
claiming, that I jumped and let out an embarrassed squeak.

My yelp opened his eyes. I forced mine shut. I couldn’t look
at him. I didn’t want to see his rumpled, adorable hair, which was stiff in
some spots and sticking up in others. Adorable? God help me. No, the only thing
I could do was clasp the cheap, threadbare sheets tighter to my breasts.

I willed myself not to cry even as the hot tears rolled down
my cheeks.

“No. No. No,” I repeated and started to rock back and forth.

“Ella?” Micah’s voice had the whisper-rough quality of
someone who’d been screaming.

His hand on my thigh was heavy and overwhelming. I became
hyperaware of it. His skin burned with the temperature of him. Was he always
this hot or did he have a fever? The warmth made me think of other, hotter
things. His mouth had been there, on my thigh. Color blazed my cheeks. If I
could have shut my eyes tighter, I would have. If I could have phazed, I would
have. I would have sold my tarnished soul to escape.

“What the hell happened?” My voice was just shy of
hysterical.

The mattress creaked. I pictured the cotton sheets moving
over the soft, dark hair on Micah’s legs as he sat up and covered himself. As I
waited for him to say something, the echo of our frenzied heartbeats filled the
room. I heard nothing but the rapid thud-thud. No cars. No crickets. No
rustling of trees. Our hearts, I realized, were beating in tandem. Mine sped.
His mimicked. Not a good sign.

“I have no idea. The last thing I remember is fog, snakes.” Micah
visibly shuddered. “I hate succubi.”

His voice made me crack one eye open and peek at him. With
the tattered sheet he dabbed at the crimson lines on his hip and stomach. He
looked at the thing as if he’d never seen the mark before. His finger moved
higher, to a deep, angry red welt above his belly button. My nails had done
that. The wound wasn’t bleeding, not anymore. My panic notched to a new level.
I haven’t had many bouts of insight, but I was having one now. I’d had more
than my share of cuts, scratches, bruises and bites. As a hunter it came with
the territory. The scratches and other bite marks covering him were all in
various states of healing. Some were fresh, hours old. Some were already
scabbing. Some were healed as if we’d been here a while.

I sat up against the headboard and brought my knees to my
chest. The movement sent a flash of pain between my legs. If I’d had any doubts
about what Micah and I had been doing, I had no delusions now. Wrapping my arms
around myself tighter, I buried my face against my knees and fought tears.
Demons and vampires I could fight. Emotional mortification, not so much.

There was new strain in Micah’s voice I’d never heard before
when he spoke. “There is a lot of blood. Is it mine, or yours? Did I…hurt you?”

I lifted my head and forced myself to look at him. Did he
hurt me? I should be asking him that question. My gaze trailed over the dried
maroon rivulets that ran down his chest. I followed them up to his throat and froze.
Mottles of purple and blue bruises outlined the two punctures on his neck. The
wound had been sucked, prodded and re-opened several times. The skin around the
edges was torn. Apparently, I hadn’t been gentle when I’d bitten him. Not that
I had any practice in biting anyone.

Seeing where my gaze fixated, Micah lifted his fingers to
the spot. I was amazed at how steady his hand was. Our eyes met. The air moved,
stirred to life with a rush of power and energy that set my nerves dancing.
Every inch of me longed to touch him, to feel him against me. Without thinking
I inched closer to him.

Shit. I stopped moving and instead concentrated on the shade
of his eyes, the circles under them. The scruff along his jaw had passed the I’m-too-lazy-to-shave
phase and graduated to a beard. The hair was golden, lighter than I’d expected
it to be. The beard made him look older than twenty-eight.

I waited for the lash of Micah’s anger. I’d bitten him. I’d
broken my oath to the Agency. Damn. I’d bitten the son of the Agency’s leader.
Micah’s eyes were full of emotion. I saw self-loathing, disgust, regret, hate
and lust… The combination was such a muddled mess.

“Your eyes,” he murmured in a voice not much over a whisper.

I shook my head. Lord only knew what emotions he saw when
looking into my eyes. I’d bitten him. I’d had sex and who knew what else with
him. I didn’t want his analysis. He reached out to me. I sprang away so fast my
feet were on the ground before the sheet could fall to the bed. I stumbled. The
back of my knees hit another bed behind me.

“Don’t touch me,” I hissed.

I regretted the words as soon as I spoke them, but I wouldn’t
take them back. Micah cringed, curled inside himself like I’d slapped him
across the face. The self-loathing won the raging battle in his eyes. The orbs
looked very green and when they started to glow, I knew it was a trick of the
damned pink light. It took everything I had not to look away.

If I’d thought it out better, I might have taken the sheet
with me when I jumped away from him. I stood completely naked. Not just
no-clothes naked, but bare-to-the-very-inside naked. Micah might be accustomed
to waking up nude with someone but I wasn’t. Julian had been my one and only
lover.

The fury inside Micah manifested and it was a familiar
weight pressing into me. Heavier than lead. More potent than fire. His anger
warmed me. He looked away from my eyes and very deliberately drank me in from
my tangled hair to my chipped, black-polished toenails. I fought not to squirm.
Similar to the design radiating from his hip, delicate crimson lines curled
around the slender muscle of my right bicep and shoulder. The design flowed
over my collarbone and spread down over my right breast. His-and-hers tattoos.
Just fucking wonderful.

“What did we do?” His voice was strangled.

I shook my head, shifted from one foot to the other. Micah
narrowed his eyes. Something other than the marks on my arm and breast caught
his attention and caused him to go still. My heart skipped the same beat his
did. I didn’t seem to have a choice in the matter. Micah crawled across the bed
to me. What the hell? Damned if I could move away from him.

He stared at my thigh. I looked down and focused on the bite
there. A few inches from my sex was a perfect purple imprint of teeth. Micah’s
teeth. The blood-filled mark was startling against my pale skin. Just as
startling as the deep-red branding lines on our bodies.

Now that I saw the wound, it hurt. His gaze, the instant
hunger in his eyes, made it throb. He brought life to it.

Voices from outside of our room broke me from my fog. A door
slammed shut nearby and the windows lining the front of our room rattled. My
heart skipped a beat. The noise, the way the windows vibrated struck something
deep inside my mind.

I looked up and met Micah’s gaze as everything hit me.

Micah slammed the rickety hotel door closed the second we
crossed the threshold in a tangle of limbs and mouths. I barely heard the
rattling of the cheaply fitted windows over our thundering hearts. He spun us and
pressed me against the wall.

Fire consumed me and my skin burned with desire. My
breasts felt swollen and heavy. The hot, slick flesh between my legs throbbed. Micah
grabbed my ass, and as he lifted, the tight nubs of my nipples scraped against
his hard chest through our layers of clothing. Pleasure shot straight to my
clit. I wrapped my legs around his waist and rubbed my aching pussy against the
bulge in his Levi’s.